Because if you buy an animal from a pet store then you give the pet store more money to put more animals in poor conditions. Also invariably these animals will be sick, and so it detracts financial resources from animals in shelters and rescue.

edit: not applying this to when it is an animal cruelty seizure and therefore a rescue effort, rather than keeping the cycle going.

And I imagine it sends a poor or mixed message when rescue or animal lovers are patronizing places that abuse animals.

Our Petsmart is often low on small animals and fish after a weekend of bustling shoppers. Is is possible you visited on a Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday? They might have just been out of little critters because of the weekend.

Actually they had animals in the cages, they just had a sign on the cages that said they will be suspending small animal sales for Easter to "discourage the purchase of pets as a holiday gift". Like that will stop people from coming in after Easter to get their "Easter bunny", but I suppose it's a small step in the right direction.

I know Petco and the likes are horrible. Recently while I was waiting for take out dinner I stopped inside just to look, I had never been before and no I didn't buy anything. Anyway the 3 pigs they had all looked fine and had big cages, food, water and even orange slices.

My question is that they had this whole big section of "cat apartments" little compartments with big full grown cats in them, very nice conditions. Anyway these cats were available for adoption through the SPCA and even had a little story posted about where they were found. Parking lots, a graveyard even, and all really local places.

So my point is and correct me if I am wrong, that when regular people who don't know about the dangers of supporting places like this come into the store they see a stray cat who needs a home and adopts from there instead of a kitten from elsewhere. Wouldn't it be nice if pet stores had animals like guinea pigs that were from shelters too, adoptable animals not piggies for sale, like the cats I saw? I am thinking if more pet stores worked closely with other shelters?

Rescues (small animal) usually don't hold adoptions in petstores because why should we help them sell supplies while they still are selling animals that we are rescuing. A while back when those stores sold dogs and cats...there was never any dog or cat rescues in there. Do you think that was a coincidence? It was only after they stopped selling the dogs and cats that shelters and rescues started having adoption centers there.

That is why the rescue that I run will not hold adoption events in petstores like petsmart and petco. When they stop selling the animals that I rescue, I will gladly hold adoptions there and support them with supply sales. Plus the stuff they sell is usually not that great for small animals anyway (cages, hay, treats, etc) so how can I recommend the supplies they sell. I will just sell them myself and put that money back into the rescue to help more animals that they sell and put in bad situations because they don't screen anybody or give them the right information.

The petco foundation (seperate from Petco) claims that if you (as a rescue) keep your animals at the store all the time and have them available for adoption all the time, they will stop selling those particular animals in whatever store you have the animals.

So another reason is that I won't keep my piggies housed in little aquariums and promote bad care. If they let me house my piggies in C&C cages and leave my information on my rescue there I would gladly do that, but they don't care enough to do that. Plus then I would have to rely on the petstore to give out the right information and care for my animals over night. That is something I am not willing to do. They sell small animals to the impulse buyers and then give bad information on top of that.

This goes for all "big chain" petstores. I can't say the same for the small ones because they seem to care a little more, but not enough. I have tried the above things and yes they don't work, Corporate will not let us do it although some managers had no problems with it.

P.S. You cannot rescue from a petstore, they will just bring in another batch of pigs to take the place of the ones you took. If you read the link from cavyspirit I think you will understand. I did not know about that until I took some from a petstore and reallzed that and it does make sense.

The PetSmart closest to me is the only one in the country that does not sell any animals. Instead, it provides a permanent site for the Lollypop Farm, an organization that rescues both pets and farm animals, which lost its original home shortly before the store opened.